Perspective on the Business of Event Processing

January 08, 2010

Prediction #3: Cognitive Physics Will Be as Important as Computing Physics

As Clayton Christensen suggests in The Innovator’s Dilemma, simplicity is always a disruptive innovation, Today this is more true than ever. The half-life of software is weeks and days, not years and decades. In computing’s first 50 years of technology, frictionless electronic distribution wasn’t the norm; now, with high-speed networks, cloud computing, and software as a service, customers expect new features immediately, and because switching costs are so much lower, they'll leave — or be acquired — more quickly than before.

If you want to do a job faster and better, you need the right tools. For knowledge-based work, the right tool aligns the "cognitive physics" — that is, good tool choice aligns the way of thinking about a problem with the way the solution is built. When cognitive physics matches implementation physics, barriers to implementation fall. Event processing tools can break down these barriers in an organization that has moving data. For example, PhaseCapital, a Boston-based hedge fund, built their entire trading system with event processing in four months - CEO Eric Pritchett estimates it would have taken them four years with traditional programming tools. But more importantly, PhaseCapital changes their system every day. They test and refine their existing ideas. Invent new ones.

So the future of innovation with event processing will be governed by its ability to reduce the friction between the way you think about a problem and the way you solve a problem. For an event-based business, ideas turn into applications more quickly, improvements are made more quickly, and problems are fixed more quickly. And this kind of speed — the speed to find, implement, and get a new idea to market — is a key element of a truly "agile" company.

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Prediction #3: Cognitive Physics Will Be as Important as Computing Physics

As Clayton Christensen suggests in The Innovator’s Dilemma, simplicity is always a disruptive innovation, Today this is more true than ever. The half-life of software is weeks and days, not years and decades. In computing’s first 50 years of technology, frictionless electronic distribution wasn’t the norm; now, with high-speed networks, cloud computing, and software as a service, customers expect new features immediately, and because switching costs are so much lower, they'll leave — or be acquired — more quickly than before.

If you want to do a job faster and better, you need the right tools. For knowledge-based work, the right tool aligns the "cognitive physics" — that is, good tool choice aligns the way of thinking about a problem with the way the solution is built. When cognitive physics matches implementation physics, barriers to implementation fall. Event processing tools can break down these barriers in an organization that has moving data. For example, PhaseCapital, a Boston-based hedge fund, built their entire trading system with event processing in four months - CEO Eric Pritchett estimates it would have taken them four years with traditional programming tools. But more importantly, PhaseCapital changes their system every day. They test and refine their existing ideas. Invent new ones.

So the future of innovation with event processing will be governed by its ability to reduce the friction between the way you think about a problem and the way you solve a problem. For an event-based business, ideas turn into applications more quickly, improvements are made more quickly, and problems are fixed more quickly. And this kind of speed — the speed to find, implement, and get a new idea to market — is a key element of a truly "agile" company.